Reforms for EU will not help jailed Kurdish MPs

Turkey's reforms aimed at securing EU membership will not affect the sentences of its longest-serving political prisoners, including the Kurdish MP Leyla Zana, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.

Its parliament voted last week to abolish the death penalty and grant greater rights to Kurds, including the legalisation of broadcasts in the Kurdish language.

Although the reforms mean the jailed Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan will be spared the death penalty, further legal challenges by four Kurdish MPs jailed in 1994 have been prevented, Human Rights Watch said. The four – Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak – are serving 15-year sentences under "anti-terror" legislation.

"We regret that parliament chose to seal the injustice inflicted on its former members, Zana, Dicle, Dogan and Sadak," said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division.

Under the new law, a Turkish citizen subject to a conviction found by the European Court of Human Rights to contravene the Human Rights Convention will be able to force Turkish courts to review the verdict. However a clause stipulates that such a right is not retroactive, in effect denying this route to the four.

In July 2001, the European Court ruled that their trial had been unfair. The Council of Europe called on Turkey to order a fresh trial, but no action has been taken.

In 1994, the Turkish authorities closed down the pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party, of which Zana was a member, accusing it of separatism. She and several other MPs from the party were arrested and put on trial for treason. The charges were later reduced to membership of an illegal armed group.